CHERRY grading and packing just got easier at Koala Country Orchards, where owners and cousins Michael and Simon Rouget have installed a new machine costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The GP Graders cherry packing and grading line can process and sort by size about 50 tonnes of produce a day - it is believed to be one of the largest machines of its kind in Australia.

Previously the packing shed could handle about 20 tonnes a day.

It also separates the cherries by cutting the stems, and a new punnet machine can package them in either clam shells or punnets.

Michael said the family business included about 150ha spread across seven properties - one at Cobram, one at Strathbogie near Euroa, and the rest near Mansfield, all in Victoria.

"We've been planting for the last five years and we needed (the machine) to handle the volume," Michael said.

"Our ability to supply orders quicker has increased, and the product range we can offer has improved; the punnet machine has improved the business as well."

Michael said the machine had an inline hydrocooler, which kept the cherries cool during packing and kept the cool chain intact, which extended shelf life.

The machine sorts the cherries into different sizes but the workers still assign them into different categories for quality and blemishes.

The business employs about 200 pickers and 120 packing shed workers over picking season.

The trees at Cobram will be mature enough to be harvested next year and are designed to come in 10 days earlier than the properties near Mansfield, which are being harvested now; and the cherries at Strathbogie are planned to extend the season an extra 10 days into January.

Some properties are serviced by drip irrigation but most are watered by microsprays, coming from catchment dams.

The business also packs for three other cherry farms.

"In the past it's been multiple packing sheds, now the trend is towards central packing sheds - one set of eyes, this fruit for this market, it's more consistent," Michael said.

Michael and Simon have so far chosen to rely on the spread of properties, rather than rain covers, as an insurance policy against rain damage - cherries are notoriously easily split when rain falls immediately before harvest.

The cousins' grandfather started the business in 1944 in the Yarra Valley, but the business was moved to minimise rain damage in the late 1990s.

While Michael said the move was worthwhile, the farms around Mansfield still had "plenty" of rain damage issues.

Michael's father, John, and Simon's father, Brian, still work in the business.